"Deserted?" she asked. "Our friend Felipe would desert his mother for a redhead."
"He"s quite a guy," Hall laughed.
"Come on," she said. "There"s a crowd that"s been dying to meet you. The country"s biggest publisher and some of the more important business men."
"Fernandez?"
"That"s right. He publishes _El Imparcial_. Confidentially, his paper is getting the Cabot Prize this year. Dad arranged it."
Fernandez was standing with a group of three Hermanitos and a blonde fortyish woman in a tight dress whom Hall recognized instantly as an American. "I"m Giselle Prescott," she said, her smile revealing flecks of lipstick on her yellow teeth.
"Take care of the amenities, will you, Gis?" Margaret Skidmore said.
"Dad is flagging me over at the other end." She picked up her skirts, hurried to her father"s rescue.
Giselle Prescott introduced Hall to Jose Fernandez, tall, handsome, in his early fifties. Fernandez presented him to Segundo Vardieno, Francisco Davila, and Alfonso Quinones. Davila was a man of one age and build with Fernandez, the other two were shorter and about ten years younger. Breathlessly, Giselle Prescott told Hall that Vardieno and Quinones were among the ten largest landowners in the nation, and Davila its leading attorney. They all made modest denials.
Quinones asked Giselle to dance, and she accepted gladly. Her myriad blonde ringlets neatly blocked her partner"s forward view.
"Very accomplished writer," Hall said. "In the popular magazine field, Miss Prescott is supreme."
"She is very able," Davila said. Like Quinones and Vardieno, he wore the emblem of the Cross and the Sword in his lapel. Fernandez wore only the ribbon of the French Legion of Honor.
"My niece told me that you had some difficulties at the Press Bureau today," Vardieno said.
"Your niece?" Then he remembered the golden Cross and Sword dangling from the thin golden chain. "Oh, yes, the young lady who speaks English so well."
Vardieno explained to Fernandez that Hall had been unable to arrange for an interview with Gamburdo. "Don"t you think you could help Senor Hall?"
Davila asked, and Fernandez a.s.sured the three men that the matter would be taken care of in the morning. Of course, it might not be possible until after the Congress convened, but then politics in San Hermano being what they were, the ill.u.s.trious colleague from North America would surely be understanding.
"What"s the inside on the political picture?" Hall asked, and the three men, talking in unison and talking singly gave him one picture.
Their picture was very detailed. "El Tovarich--our Red President, you know," had lined up the unruly elements behind a dangerous program of confiscating the estates of their rightful owners and turning them over to communist gunmen. In addition to this land-piracy scheme, Tabio also intended to drive the Catholic Church underground and impose heavy penalty taxes on the parents who sent their children to Catholic parochial schools. To aid in this program, Tabio was throwing open the gates of the nation to Red agitators disguised as Jewish and Spanish refugees.
"So it"s as bad as that," Hall said.
"Worse." Fernandez looked around him. "Come closer," he said. "There"s something I must tell you about your own safety."
"My safety?"
"Yes, Senor." Fernandez had his right hand on Hall"s shoulder. "Late this afternoon I received a confidential information that the Communist Party in San Hermano had privately denounced you to its members."
"Denounced me? But why?"
"Yes, Senor. And it was a most dangerous denunciation, too. A prominent communist leader telephoned the editor of the official Red paper and denounced you for being an enemy of Tovarich Tabio and a supporter of Senor Gamburdo."
Hall smiled. "But that couldn"t be so bad," he demurred. "The Reds are always denouncing someone. Tomorrow the Communist Party paper will attack me as a fascist, and I guess that will be the end of the whole thing."
"No, that is not what will happen," Segundo Vardieno insisted. "Tell him the rest of the information, Don Jose."
Again Jose Fernandez looked around to make sure that he was not being overheard. "Senor Vardieno is right, my friend. You see," he said, "the Red who phoned the _Mundo Obrero_ ordered the editor _not_ to print a word about you--yet. Do you understand what that means?"
Davila, the lawyer, explained. "What Don Jose means," he said, "is that a secret denunciation generally precedes an a.s.sa.s.sination. You see, Senor Hall, if the Reds denounce you in their press, you would be marked before the world as an enemy of the Tovarich. Then, if anything happened to you--they are not only blameless, but even after killing you they can make great propaganda about how the alleged fascists killed you because you are a noted American patriot who stands for free enterprise."
"Pretty clever," Hall said.
"Jewish cleverness!" Segundo Vardieno was shaking with rage. "Give a Jew a hundred pesos and in a day he has a thousand and you"ll never know how he did it. But will he apply his cleverness for the good of the country?
No! Only for communism."
"Is Tabio a Jew?" Hall asked.
"Confidentially," Vardieno answered, "El Tovarich is a Sephardic Jew.
But we"re not making it public because we are gentlemen."
"And only because we are gentlemen," Fernandez added. "I don"t think El Tovarich will be among us much longer."
"Is he really that sick?"
"Oh, yes," Davila said. "You know what happened to him, don"t you? No?
Well, it"s almost like the Hand of Divine Retribution." He told Hall that Tabio had turned over to one of his henchman a vineyard confiscated from an old family, and that in grat.i.tude the henchman had started to distill a special brandy for the Tovarich. "And now, the excess alcohol from too much of the stolen grape has taken its toll."
"Well, what do you know!" Hall said.
"It is the gospel truth," Fernandez said. "I have ways of confirming the story."
"Some mess, isn"t it?" Hall said.
"It is filled with dangers," Vardieno said. "Your calmness is admirable, Senor Hall, but you had better watch out. The Reds are out to kill you."
Hall accepted a cigar from Jose Fernandez, took his time about lighting it before answering Vardieno. "Oh, I don"t know," he said, casually.
"Perhaps you might know that earlier in this war, I was on board a British warship which the n.a.z.is sunk with aerial torpedoes. I not only survived, but I came through without a scratch. Since then I just can"t get too excited about a threat." He looked at the three men to see if his braggart"s act succeeded. Fernandez was obviously the most impressed of the three.
"_Bueno! Muy caballero!_" Fernandez said. "But you had better be careful. The Reds in San Hermano have none of the sporting codes of the n.a.z.i airman."
"Well, now that you mention it," Hall said, "I did catch some b.a.s.t.a.r.d following me the other day."
In a small voice, Davila asked, "Did you get a good look at him?"
"I most certainly did. He was a big, clumsy brute in the white linen suit of a respectable business man and a panama hat. But I"ll bet a good box of Havana cigars that he was a longsh.o.r.eman or a miner. I know the type."
Davila looked at Vardieno and Fernandez. A slow grin crept over the lawyer"s face, and then the other two Hermanitos were grinning too. "So they started, eh?" he said. "Well, don"t let that big one worry you too much. Should he, Don Jose?"
The publisher grunted. "No. Don"t worry about that one." Hall could sense that Fernandez was picking up his cue from the lawyer.
"As a matter of fact," Davila said, "I"ll wager that you can find the picture of the man in the white suit in Don Jose"s confidential file on the Reds. He keeps it in his office in the _Imparcial_ building."
"I would be honored if you visited me in my office," Jose Fernandez said to Hall.
"Perhaps I can make it this week," Hall said.